Ashley is 5 times as old as Daniel and is also 40 years older than Daniel. How old is Ashley?
Explanation: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Ashley and Daniel. Let Ashley's current age be $a$ and Daniel's current age be $d$ $a = 5d$ $a = d + 40$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $a$ is to solve the second equation for $d$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $d$ , we get: $d = a - 40$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $a = 5$ $(a - 40)$ which combines the information about $a$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $a = 5a - 200$ Solving for $a$ , we get: $4 a = 200$ $a = 50$.